The Role of Memory in Attention

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Join us for some free pizza and a great talk about science!

This talk will be from Dr. Tobias Egner of Duke University, discussing his research on how memory affects attention.

TALK INFO

Investigating the relationship between working memory and attentionThe conceptual relationship between the constructs of “working memory” (maintaining and/or manipulating information in mind over a short period of time) and “attention” (prioritizing the processing of a subset of sensory information) in contemporary psychology is murky. In the present talk, I will sketch out an integrative framework for this relationship and present some recent empirical studies that speak to the interaction between working memory and attention in driving behavior. Based on these data, I will argue that we should conceive of working memory as representing internally directed attention, which involves the same representations, resources, and mechanisms as attending to external stimuli.

SPEAKER

Dr. Tobias Egner is Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, at Duke University. Hailing from Berlin (Germany), he was conferred his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of London (2002) and awarded postdoctoral research fellowships at Columbia University and Northwestern University prior to joining the faculty at Duke in 2009. Dr. Egner uses non-invasive neuro-imaging and neuro-stimulation techniques to study the human brain, and he has published more than 80 journal articles on the neural mechanisms of cognitive and affective control, attention, and visual cognition.Can't make it? Pizza lunch talks are now being broadcast live! Check the @Amscimag twitter feed on the day for the link. If you watch on a phone/tablet, you can ask questions live and we will relay them to the speaker.

Free pizza and beverages are provided before and during the talk, though it's on a first come, first serve basis.

RSVPs are required (for the slice count) by registering for a free ticket to this event at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-role-of-memory-in-attention-tickets-28563004716. Please get your ticket by 12PM on Monday, October 24. (If you decide to come after this time, you're welcome to attend, but we might not have pizza for you.)

Thanks to a grant from the N.C. Biotechnology Center and funding from the RTP chapter of Sigma Xi, American Scientist's noontime Pizza Lunch speaker series is free and open to science journalists and science communicators of all stripes, as well as any interested member of the public. Feel free to extend this invitation to anyone who might want to attend.

Talks are co-organized with Science Communicators of North Carolina (SCONC). The RTP chapter of Sigma Xi is a co-organizer and co-sponsor, and encourages any interested scientists to get involved with the chapter and its upcoming events. We thank The Frontier for providing space.